Famous Photography finds new Life on Google
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Steve Smith

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More than ten million images from the Life photo archive will be available on Google. According to Time Inc. 97% of the collection never have been seen by the public and they include images from some of Life’s army of famed snappers (Alfred Eisenstadt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks and W. Eugene Smith) The images will come up in standard image searches at Google or in a more organized way at the Life Collection here.

This has been a massive task, apparently going on for two years with about three-quarters of the ten million images already scanned and tagged. Time Inc. will be monetizing the images through direct links into the art sales site QOOP. Its syndication partner, Getty Images, will handle licensing for commercial purposes. When we clicked into some images, a buy button led us to framed versions of the images available for purchase. The images carry LIFE watermarking and apparently are not intended for public domain use. Time Inc. specified in the announcement that all copyright and ownership remains with Time. “The primary purpose is to make these available to consumers as information and as framed art,” says Life president Andy Blau.

Blau admits that the blogging community may sit somewhere between personal and commercial use, and that Time Inc. will be policing the re-use of images, especially where third parties try to monetize or pirate them. Of course, bloggers swipe and reuse online imagery as a matter of habit. It will be interesting to see how some of these iconic images make the rounds online and whether and how Time will pursue violators. Blau says that whole nabbing bloggers will not be a first priority, the images do carry invisible Digimarcs that allow them to be tracked.

Time Inc.'s and Getty Images' Life.com site, which also features the photos from Life magazine, is set to launch in early 2009.

Life magzine closed for the third and final time in April of 2006.

If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com

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